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Special forms in Lisp

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Kent M. PitmanAuthors Info & Claims

LFP '80: Proceedings of the 1980 ACM conference on LISP and functional programming

Pages 179 - 187

https://doi.org/10.1145/800087.802804

Published: 25 August 1980 Publication History

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Abstract

Special forms are those expressions in the Lisp language which do not follow normal rules for evaluation. Some such forms are necessary as primitives of the language, while others may be desirable in order to improve readability, control the evaluation environment, implement abstraction and modularity, affect the flow of control, allow extended scoping mechanisms, define functions which accept a variable number of arguments, or achieve greater efficiency. There exist several long-standing mechanisms for specifying the definition of special forms: FEXPR's, NLAMBDA's and MACRO's.

In this paper, the motivations for using special forms are discussed, followed by a summary of the advantages and disadvantages of employing MACRO's, FEXPR's, and NLAMBDA's as tools for their implementation. It is asserted that MACRO's offer an adequate mechanism for specifying special form definitions and that FEXPR's do not. Evidence is given which supports the author's contention that FEXPR's interfere with the correct operation of code-analyzing programs such as the compiler. Finally, it is suggested that, in the design of future Lisp dialects, serious consideration be given to the proposition that FEXPR's should be omitted from the language altogether.

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Cited By

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Goel AVitek J(2019)On the design, implementation, and use of laziness in RProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/33605793:OOPSLA(1-27)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3360579
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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2996451
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Index Terms

Special forms in Lisp
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language features
        Procedures, functions and subroutines
      2. Language types
2. Theory of computation
  1. Semantics and reasoning
    1. Program constructs
      1. Control primitives

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LFP '80: Proceedings of the 1980 ACM conference on LISP and functional programming

August 1980

247 pages

ISBN:9781450373968

DOI:10.1145/800087

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 25 August 1980

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Goel AVitek J(2019)On the design, implementation, and use of laziness in RProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/33605793:OOPSLA(1-27)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3360579
Boukerche AMagnano AAljeri N(2017)Mobile IP Handover for Vehicular NetworksACM Computing Surveys10.1145/299645149:4(1-34)Online publication date: 6-Feb-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2996451
Schuster CDisney TFlanagan C(2016)MacroficationProceedings of the 25th European Symposium on Programming Languages and Systems - Volume 963210.5555/3089528.3089553(644-671)Online publication date: 2-Apr-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3089528.3089553
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Schuster CDisney TFlanagan C(2016)Macrofication: Refactoring by Reverse Macro ExpansionProgramming Languages and Systems10.1007/978-3-662-49498-1_25(644-671)Online publication date: 2016
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-49498-1_25
Kokke WSwierstra W(2015)Auto in AgdaMathematics of Program Construction10.1007/978-3-319-19797-5_14(276-301)Online publication date: 9-Jun-2015
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19797-5_14
Disney TFaubion NHerman DFlanagan C(2014)Sweeten your JavaScriptACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/2775052.266109750:2(35-44)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2014
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Disney TFaubion NHerman DFlanagan CBlack ATratt L(2014)Sweeten your JavaScriptProceedings of the 10th ACM Symposium on Dynamic languages10.1145/2661088.2661097(35-44)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2014
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Das Sarma ANanongkai DPandurangan GTetali P(2013)Distributed Random WalksJournal of the ACM10.1145/2432622.243262460:1(1-31)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2013
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